Cracked Corn And Snow Ice Cream (64 pp. $18.00; Sept. 1997; 0-15- 227250-X): An elegantly designed collection of birthdates, folk wisdom, garden tips, recipes, old photos, and family reminiscences that conjure up country life and bygone times. To anecdotes from their oldest Iowa, Wisconsin, and Kansas relatives, dubbed ``The Voices,'' Willard and Dyer add items ``Worth Knowing,'' from historical curiosities to a list of edible flowers, food ``Worth Cooking,'' a scattering of ``Dates and Festivals,'' plus an ongoing ``Farmer's Calendar,'' decorated with epigrams, garlands of verse, small, sharp black-and-white photos, carefully lettered titles, and tiny, exact depictions of flowers, farm animals, and people in rustic dress. Casual browsers drawn by the pictures' visual appeal or the play of colors on the page will linger to savor the homespun recollections. (Anthology. 9-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-15-227250-X
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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Renowned Latin American writer Alvarez has created another story about cultural identity, but this time the primary character is 11-year-old Miguel Guzmán.
When Tía Lola arrives to help the family, Miguel and his hermana, Juanita, have just moved from New York City to Vermont with their recently divorced mother. The last thing Miguel wants, as he's trying to fit into a predominantly white community, is a flamboyant aunt who doesn't speak a word of English. Tía Lola, however, knows a language that defies words; she quickly charms and befriends all the neighbors. She can also cook exotic food, dance (anywhere, anytime), plan fun parties, and tell enchanting stories. Eventually, Tía Lola and the children swap English and Spanish ejercicios, but the true lesson is "mutual understanding." Peppered with Spanish words and phrases, Alvarez makes the reader as much a part of the "language" lessons as the characters. This story seamlessly weaves two culturaswhile letting each remain intact, just as Miguel is learning to do with his own life. Like all good stories, this one incorporates a lesson just subtle enough that readers will forget they're being taught, but in the end will understand themselves, and others, a little better, regardless of la lengua nativa—the mother tongue.
Simple, bella, un regalo permenente: simple and beautiful, a gift that will stay. (Fiction. 9-11)Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-80215-0
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A child finds that being alone in a tiny tropical paradise has its ups and downs in this appealingly offbeat tale from the Australian author of Peeling the Onion (1999). Though her mother is long dead and her scientist father Jack has just sailed off on a quick expedition to gather plankton, Nim is anything but lonely on her small island home. Not only does she have constant companions in Selkie, a sea lion, and a marine iguana named Fred, but Chica, a green turtle, has just arrived for an annual egg-laying—and, through the solar-powered laptop, she has even made a new e-mail friend in famed adventure novelist Alex Rover. Then a string of mishaps darkens Nim’s sunny skies: her father loses rudder and dish antenna in a storm; a tourist ship that was involved in her mother’s death appears off the island’s reefs; and, running down a volcanic slope, Nim takes a nasty spill that leaves her feverish, with an infected knee. Though she lives halfway around the world and is in reality a decidedly unadventurous urbanite, Alex, short for “Alexandra,” sets off to the rescue, arriving in the midst of another storm that requires Nim and companions to rescue her. Once Jack brings his battered boat limping home, the stage is set for sunny days again. Plenty of comic, freely-sketched line drawings help to keep the tone light, and Nim, with her unusual associates and just-right mix of self-reliance and vulnerability, makes a character young readers won’t soon tire of. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-375-81123-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2000
Categories: CHILDREN'S GENERAL CHILDREN'S
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